By Independent News Roundup
Ukraine’s impending defeat, in the sense of failing to reconquer all of its lost territory by the end of the ongoing conflict, has sparked a blame game about who’s responsible for this epic debacle. Senior fellow at the liberal Atlantic Council think tank Adrian Karatnycky published a piece at Foreign Policy in early December in which he argued that “[Biden’s] administration failed Ukraine at almost every turn, shaping the war to this day.” His supposed proof is their cautious climbing of the escalation ladder.
Far from being a sign of weakness and the reason for Ukraine’s defeat, it was actually an unexpected display of pragmatism, albeit one that couldn’t avert Russia’s victory. The outcome of this proxy war was predetermined given the gross imbalance of power between the two combatants, but it’s been postponed till now due to US-led NATO’s support of Ukraine. About that, every major aid package was telegraphed ahead of time, which helped manage tensions with Russia. As was explained in late 2024:
“[The US hawks’] comparatively more pragmatic rivals who still call the shots always signal their escalatory intentions far in advance so that Russia could prepare itself and thus be less likely to ‘overreact’ in some way that risks World War III. Likewise, Russia continues restraining itself from replicating the US’ ‘shock-and-awe’ campaign in order to reduce the likelihood of the West ‘overreacting’ by directly intervening in the conflict to salvage their geopolitical project and thus risking World War III.
It can only be speculated whether this interplay is due to each’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (‘deep state’) behaving responsibly on their own considering the enormity of what’s at stake or if it’s the result of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. Whatever the truth may be, the aforesaid model accounts for the unexpected moves or lack thereof from each, which are the US correspondingly telegraphing its escalatory intentions and Russia never seriously escalating in kind.”
The only exceptions were Putin authorizing two uses of the Oreshniks, the first in response to the Anglo-American Axis first authorizing Ukraine’s use of their long-range missiles against targets inside of Russia. Apart from that, the abovementioned dynamic has remained in place throughout the entire conflict, thus doing more than anything else other than Putin’s saintly patience for averting World War III. Even Trump 2.0 retained this policy by telegraphing its Tomahawk plans before ultimately shelving them.
Just like the liberals, he too criticized Biden for “not letting Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND”, which Karatnycky cited in his article. Nevertheless, given the insight that was shared, it’s arguably that case that blaming Biden for Ukraine’s defeat is politically convenient and not a reflection of reality. Had his administration announced advanced weapons transfers to Ukraine at the start, it could have spooked Russia into an extreme escalation and then NATO reciprocating, thus recklessly risking World War III.
The most honest criticisms that can be made of the Biden Administration are that they provoked the conflict, didn’t prepare for a “war of attrition”, and didn’t pressure Zelensky into peace after Ukraine’s late 2022 counteroffensives in Kharkov and Kherson before it started irreversibly losing ground to Russia. Blaming them for not climbing the escalation ladder faster is dishonest, but more liberals are expected to do so to distract from their cheerleading of the aforesaid policies that resulted in this epic debacle.
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